SOPA Opera – The Craziest Congressional Takes On Internet Piracy

The recent congressional hearing on the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) generated a tidal wave of protest online, with startups censoring their homepages, drafting petitions and Tumblr sending an astonishing 87,000 phone calls to elected officials. But the hearing itself was less of a success. Many of the members of the House Judiciary Committee seemed amused, annoyed and downright dismissive of the anger emanating from the tech community. We gathered together some of their statements, both for and against, to give a flavor of how our lawmakers view online piracy.
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The recent congressional hearing on the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) generated a tidal wave of protest online, with startups censoring their homepages, drafting petitions and Tumblr sending an astonishing 87,000 phone calls to elected officials. But the hearing itself was less of a success. Many of the members of the House Judiciary Committee seemed amused, annoyed and downright dismissive of the anger emanating from the tech community. We gathered together some of their statements, both for and against, to give a flavor of how our lawmakers view online piracy.